Items or objects such as many food objects are marketed and sold in batches of predetermined size, weight or number of objects in each package. Batching of items which are in large quantity and require a speedy process requires that a certain amount of items or weight is given by the produces. This is due to the fact that the marketing promises a minimum weight or number of items in each package. This is costly, specifically when batching millions or tons of items every day.
Traditionally, batches are made by forming a coarse batch in a collection bin and then selecting more carefully a remaining number or weight to fill the batch with to close it. Another way is to combine a known number or weight of items on a processing line after detection and divert them collection bins they have been assigned to. The computer then calculates the best fit and assigns each item or a pre-batch of items to a certain bin. This is however not attractive when batching a very large number of items or where speed is important.
One of the problems with batching small items in large quantities is the speed factor. When batching items like pelagic fish, which are caught and handled in enormous quantity and numbers, speed and accuracy are often difficult to combine. Some of the problems with maintaining an acceptable speedy process are that there will always be a contamination of other species, damaged or bad quality items in-between and the difficulty of maintaining minimum weight in each batch. Most batching systems on the market today use a human worker to monitor the processing/batching line to manually eject damaged fish or fish or wrong species. This is both time consuming and expensive and inaccurate way of ejecting bad quality fish and wrong species of the line. With respect to maintaining minimum weight in each batch, the cost of speed is more give away in each batch to secure that all batches are above minimum weight. For example, when batching mackerel into 15 Kg portions, the give-away is approximately 0.5 Kg. This is due to fact that there will always be contaminations of other pelagic species like herring in the batches as well as some bad quality fish, which are not spotted by the human eye. In addition to that, there always has to be some give-away in each batch to secure a minimum weight, in this case 15 Kg. A give away of approximately 0.5 Kg amounts to a considerable amount of weight when tons of fish are being batched every day.